Epson V300 Scanner

I had a need for a scanner to scan the pile of pictures I had in my loft. A quick internet search reveals the product is on sale at all the major retailers with host of other minor ones. Though the item may sound good, the fact is that is mostly unavailable even from Epson’s outlets. It is a good all-round scanner at an impressive price, giving speedy scans overall, robust in built-quality and user-friendly. Paper scans are equally fairly muted in color, but are fast. A basic scan is a matter of just seconds.

The edge in a flatbed slide and film scanner over a traditional film scanner is its capability to scan four slides or six negatives in a strip in one shot. And here, the software has automatic mechanism to recognize this to scan the images into different files, which can reduce the scanning time if scanning whole films is required. Photos and other scans may require a bit of retouching.

There are some positive and negative aspects like any other scanner. It has some retarded scanning times – four slides at the maximum 13,000dpi and the maximum color setting take 32 minutes compared to a more useful 2,400dpi scan of the same slides taking only around four minutes. In many cases the colors give a little washed out appearance which required some touch-up. The color rectification was not as good as it should be when adjusted manually. If top-quality pictures are desired, extra time is required for touch-up.

The Epson V300 scanner has been contrived for both papers besides film scanning – it is a standard flatbed slide scanner, provided with a hinged lid on the side to enable insertion of documents to be scanned.

The lid conceals the light unit that is essential for scanning negatives as well as slides. It is very much handy over the older models that required the user to change over the lids while scanning the film, whereas the only thing to be done in this improved model is to remove a white plastic mat which hides the lamp on the top when it is not used.

It is a quite slim unit which is robustly built, with only USB and side power connectors, and four buttons on the top (for scanning to the printer, email or a PDF, and the power button).

Installation is a hassle-free as the CD supplied with the package has whatever software needed, including the reasonably (powerful but ease-of-use) user friendly Epson Scan software, with certain document management tools. Results are impressive – scans are crystal clear and brilliant. In many cases the colors give a little faded appearance which required some touch-up. However, this can be carried out automatically with the Epson software and, when switched on, did not require time to process, though at the same time, the color rectification was not as good as it should be when adjusted manually.

Overall, the V300 photo scanner is adaptive, but if top-quality pictures are desired, extra time for touch-up is required. As a well-rounded home  photo and slide scanner, it is worth buying.

Epson Perfection V300 Photo Scanner is a post from: Slide Scanner tips & ideas website.

ImageLab FS5CO5 5 megapixel slide and negative scanner was found to be a fine compromise for personal use which made me to buy the same for my armature use. Except for a few shortcomings, the experience was quite satisfactory as this scanner has many an advantages making the overall usage enjoyable. The trays are too shallow making the loading of film little bit of a problem. The built in software does not have any provision to remove scratches resulting in unclear contrast.

It took too long a time to fine tune and scan especially when they had to be loaded one at a time and the scanning the slides on my brightened flat-bed scanner was found to be very tedious and time consuming. This could be tolerated for a few slides but certainly not a stack load. I was exploring the possibility of locating a device for my parents to easily use to download thousands of our family photos into their computer. I was quite aware of these hand held scanners earlier also. But the ignorance about their quality and price kept me away to make a decision. There are automatic slide scanners capable of scanning multiple images but are very costly.

With my two decade working experience in the film industry in developing scanning technology for negative and digital conversion of motion picture films. This product ImageLab FS5CO5 slide scanner is certainly a good choice for home quality slide conversions and for the facilities it offers the price is worth.

There are very good design features in ImageLab FS5CO5 scanner that scores superiority over other quick shot scanners. The perfection in the design factor makes this easy and simple to use. There is a button for each slide and for film negatives and their functions are labeled therein. To see the accuracy of positioning the object and then scan there is a live screen. Although the scans come out with good contrast, it is very fast. A couple of quick adjustments in iPhoto produce amazing results in simplicity at good speed. You may probably be dissatisfied with the images as they emerge out of the scanner, if only you do not have iPhoto or lack fundamentals of adjusting photos. Prior to my uploading into my computer, a few of my slides gave blown out highs with inky black shadows. If you have iPhoto, simply load the scanner, illuminate the shadows, and dim the highlights to obtain a fast and commendable development.

Some of the benefits of the ImageLab FS5CO5 scanner are as follows:

*5 mpx images: The images are sharp and the dimensions of the megapixel are pretty perfect for cropping and enlarging.

*SD Card: My Mac has numerous computer hardware will only accept software for PC. With the ease of using a SD memory card in this scanner, loading the scans to computer becomes easy as in the case of uploading camera photos. For scanning slides suitable when on the move or in travel this is convenient as it is portable.

*Quick Scanning: flatbed scanners take several minutes to scan a slide producing good results; but if hundreds and thousands of slides are to be scanned, it takes longer time. This one is as speedy as a camera with a push click done arrangement. Technically, this is a camera more than a scanner thus justifies its speedy working. The camera just takes a close-up picture of the slide. It is never as good as the slow model, but can save time by prolonged efforts for the special slides.

Imagelab FS5CO5 Slide and Negative Scanner is a post from: Slide Scanner tips & ideas website.

Wolverine F2D 35mm film to digital image converter was thoroughly analyzed and the experience gained with the exposure prompted me to draw some conclusion as follows:

The negative images lack desired quality. Using photo CD images from a local big bulls-eyes store are not impressive as they are grittier when compared some scanned images and prints. The images off the Wolverine F2D came out excessively exposed with low contrast and muted colors when attempted to convert. They also looked to be grittier. It did not require putting in much effort while playing around with Adobe Photoshop (Elements), since it needed to test this scanner essentially after installing Light room. There is a brush included which is meant to be used to clean the glass post in every set of scans. Though it seemed to work there is nothing unique about this product.

Thousands of old family slides could be scanned by this device. The scans are not up to the mark, though it is claimed as fast scans and need not require to be attached to a PC, laptop etc. Much of the image details were lost in the scan as the scan stuff is very dark and could not be fixed in Photoshop.

When scanning the photos of a toddler sitting in front of a couch, the couch rendered a big dark blob appearance behind him, though the toddler was wearing bright colors and his clothes were fine. But when looked at the slide in a slide viewer, these details of designs in the couch fabric and the bright clothing were all could be seen clearly.

This makes the point clear that the scan did no show, what it should have. It would be better to invest a little more and purchase a superior product than to go for this. This could be a fair choice for those looking for a cheap way to digitize film slides or negatives. It is simple to use and it works. When the results are being viewed in the monitor, while scanning a few negatives, it can be found instantaneously that it is a standalone, fast and user friendly.

One cannot get an excellent film slide scanner for the price of this. Yet Wolverine F2D gives complete job of saving images, which otherwise would slip into forgetfulness over the passing time. These scans are not certainly up to the mark nor are they adequately super imposed. It is doubtful if they are capable of preserving the details in those old images. But unless one spends lot of money for better equipment it may not be possible. This tiny device is pretty good to do the job anyway. Making some fundamental adjustments with Photoshop to get satisfactory results, it is possible to get scanned images as desired. If that is what is being sought after this may be a compact reasonably good device to utilize to get results.

Wolverine F2D 35mm Film to Digital Image Converter is a post from: Slide Scanner tips & ideas website.